A visit to the museum of folk art in New York inspired an ongoing interest in folk art of all kinds, and I am also influenced by 20th century illustrators such as Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious, and the american lithographed children’s books of a similar era. My work incorporates a love of pattern and detail and is strongly influenced by the landscape and creatures of my surroundings in the Yorkshire countryside, as well as all kinds of weird and wonderful objects found in museums and antique shops.

I graduated in 2008 with a BA in illustration from Edinburgh College of Art, having also studied at York college, and for a semester at the Rhode Island School of Design. She was one of the original presenters of the BBC children’s wildlife programme The Really Wild Show. More recently, she has made her name as a children’s author. Nicola Davies is an English zoologist and writer.

Microbes are an undertreated topic in literature for the younger crowd, and this could be a good introduction for that first revelatory look through a microscope.Special thanks to Nicola Davies and Emily Sutton for answering 5 questions about their recently featured book – Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes Though scale is confusing in a few illustrations, the figures, in a retro autumnal palette on cream matte pages, have a charming naïveté. While the book oversimplifies at times, the colorful examples and vivid explanations (the book gives microbes big credit for their ability to multiply at speed) help bring this unseen world to life. The subject is broader than usual for Davies’ early biology treatises, and the absence of the slightly more sophisticated secondary narrative found in those makes this an entry-level approach for kids who are just starting to think about the world beyond the visible. Simple descriptions and comparisons (“There are creatures so tiny that millions could fit on this ant’s antenna”) help explain this group of organisms, with points made about their variability, their durability, and their human-relevant achievements the book also makes a point of noting that microbes that make you sick are in the minority (“Most microbes are busy doing other things”). The world that we can’t see is even more populous than the world we can, a point made by biologist Davies in her introduction to microbes for very young audiences.

Tiny Creatures by Nicola Davies